Re: Hammerstein Revisited

[wiener <wiener...>]

Josh,

Thanks for that entry.  Encyclopedia Judaica seems to assume his
Jewishness, but if the jewhoo.com entry is correct, I don't know by
whose definition he would have been Jewish.

If Oscar Hammerstein II was baptized (regardless of his parenthood)
and raised as a Baptist and never converted to Judaism, I don't
believe that any religious denomination of Judaism would consider him
Jewish.

(A question I have pondered in this and similar cases is whether we
would consider him Jewish if he were a serial killer.)

Bob

P.S. I have been swamped by work lately and my e-mail program wiped
out all of my messages.  So if I have not answered your message, for
example, on my Music of Blacks and Jews program, please e-mail me
again.

-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Horowitz <horowitz (at) styria(dot)com>
To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Date: Saturday, April 21, 2001 3:37 PM
Subject: Hammerstein Revisited


>
>Budowitz Website: http://www.budowitz.com
>
>I don't know if this is still relevant, but Oscar Hammerstein appears
in the
>Encyclpedia Judaice with the following entry:
>
>HAMMERSTEIN, U.S. family closely associated with the development of
opera
>and the popular musical theater in U.S. Its two most famous members
were
>Oscar Hammerstein I (1847-1919) and his grandson, Oscar II
(1895-1960). Born
>in Berlin, OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN I ran away from home, reached New York
in 1863,
>and worked in a cigar factory. He soon became an important and
wealthy
>figure in the industry. His passion, however, was for building opera
houses.
>The Harlem Opera House, built in the 1880s, was his first. The
Victoria
>(1899) was a successful vaudeville theater managed by his son
WILLIAM.
>Altogether he built ten opera houses and theaters in New York, in
addition
>to an opera house in Philadelphia (1908) and one in London (1911).
His
>Manhattan Opera House (1906), a venture in which his son ARTHUR
(1873-1955)
>was closely involved, competed with the dominant Metropolitan Opera
House
>until 1910, when the Metropolitan bought it out for $1,200,000. In
its time
>the Manhattan helped to make grand opera exciting by bringing new
talent and
>works to American audiences. His later ventures were less successful.
OSCAR
>HAMMERSTEIN II, librettist, was born in New York, the son of William
>Hammerstein. He played an important role in developing the "musical
play"
>into an integrated dramatic form. He worked for his uncle Arthur as a
stage
>manager. By 1920 he had produced the books for three musicals.
Wildflower
>(1923) was his first real success. Subsequently he collaborated on
such
>Broadway musicals as Rose Marie (1924), Desert Song (1926), and Show
Boat
>(1927). After some years in Hollywood, he formed his partnership with
the
>composer Richard Rodgers in 1943. Together they produced a series of
>successful musicals with a style and form of their own. These
included
>Oklahoma (1943), Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), which won a
Pulitzer
>Prize, The King and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959). The
Rodgers and
>Hammerstein Foundation, New York, established a fund for cancer
research in
>1963, at the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem.
>[Harvey A. Cooper]
>
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>